


Scars

by rowofstars



Category: Scarecrow and Mrs. King
Genre: Angst, F/M, Introspection, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 05:06:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3277820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowofstars/pseuds/rowofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes he stops and takes stock of what he has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

> For [humansrsuperior](http://humansrsuperior.livejournal.com/)'s prompt scars in the wee writing meme. Ran by the braintwin, Mary. ;) I've never written Scarecrow and Mrs. King fic so I hope it's okay. Somehow they are a lot angstier now than in the 80s, but aren't we all? 
> 
> Imported from my LJ. Originally posted in 2011.

 

A kitchen incident with a paring knife when she was in high school needed four stitches and left the thinnest white line on the side of her middle finger. It was the first one he ever noticed, one of those things he was trained to observe about people, but is now catalogued not as a distinguishing feature of an asset or target, but as just another piece of the Amanda King puzzle.

The second he read in a file, a quick and dirty dossier Francine pulled together for him in those first days when everything about her was aggravating and tedious and somehow utterly endearing. Appendectomy when she was twenty, it read, four days in the hospital, minimal complications. At the time it was just a fact to commit to memory, but later he wondered idly if Joe had been there to hold her hand and fetch more chocolate pudding, if anyone had ever traced the line from hip to navel with fingers and lips the way he had done so many times.

The last hurts the most for both of them.

A star shape near the center of her chest topping a long angry path between her breasts sits too close to what counts for his comfort. The way it rises and falls with her breathing in the middle of the night reminds him of what he almost ignored, almost passed over, almost lost, but it fades with each passing year like the memory of all those tubes and machines and the sterile smell of the hallways.

There are others, of course, scattered over her skin in the pattern of a life, from sharp edges and more kitchen incidents, escaping handcuffs and thankfully no more bullets. He has his share too, each with a story she never gets tired of hearing even when she gets a lump in her throat and a hitch in her breath at the thought of what could have happened.

He smiles as she mumbles a bit in her sleep and reaches up to brush her hair back, careful not to wake her. She has yet to say anything about the times she’s awakened to find him watching her, just looked at him and somehow understood. His fingers sink into her hair a bit, loving how soft it always is, when he notices a tiny mark on her forehead. He frowns, unable to recall when or where it came from.

At that moment her eyes blink several times and then open, and she turns her face towards him.

“Treehouse,” she says quietly, and then rolls with him until she’s tucked against his side with his arm around her.

He frowns and then smiles again when he realizes she knew what he was thinking. “When the boys were little?”

She grins and stretches her arm over his torso. “No, two weeks ago.”

He opens his mouth to say something but words, as they often do with her, fail him. He shakes his head and feels her laugh softly.

A few minutes later he’s asleep and she smiles, finger lightly tracing the white line on the left side of his chest.


End file.
